Horizontal CO2 Reactor - Yugang 鱼缸 Reactor

[Naturescapes_Rocco]

I also want to throw this out there: Easy and Cheap DIY Horizontal reactor (Yugang Reactor) from an existing vertical reactor:

I'm about to experiment with doing this with an empty sideways Netlea Prefilter, since it has a great 180-degree turnaround with built-in 16/22mm quick disconnects that would fit well in many stands:

I could just use a cheap in-line CO2 diffuser without the ceramics to inject the CO2 bubbles into the system.

It is rotateable for adjusting the power, can be placed/mounted in the stand anywhere because of the 180-degree turnaround design. True, it would lose some flow because of the 180-degree design, but as long as your pump/filter is strong enough it won't be an issue.

 

[Yugang]

My favourite implementation would the first one, with water flow as per arrows, with the outflow used for overflow mode and automatic purging.




The second will work, but cannot be used in overflow mode and would require manual purging from time to time. Of course this could be solved by rotating the reactor, about 90 degrees, so that water surface same as water outflow. If that's what you meant @Naturescapes_Rocco , then that's a great idea.

 

[Bettatail]

My favourite implementation would the first one, with water flow as per arrows, with the outflow used for overflow mode and automatic purging.


View attachment 8419

The second will work, but cannot be used in overflow mode and would require manual purging from time to time. Of course this could be solved by rotating the reactor, about 90 degrees, so that water surface same as water outflow. If that's what you meant @Naturescapes_Rocco , then that's a great idea.

I also want to throw this out there: Easy and Cheap DIY Horizontal reactor (Yugang Reactor) from an existing vertical reactor:
View attachment 8415
I'm about to experiment with doing this with an empty sideways Netlea Prefilter, since it has a great 180-degree turnaround with built-in 16/22mm quick disconnects that would fit well in many stands:
View attachment 8417
I could just use a cheap in-line CO2 diffuser without the ceramics to inject the CO2 bubbles into the system.

It is rotateable for adjusting the power, can be placed/mounted in the stand anywhere because of the 180-degree turnaround design. True, it would lose some flow because of the 180-degree design, but as long as your pump/filter is strong enough it won't be an issue.

last month, I built a cerges style reactor for myself and a fellow hobbyist from Texas, actually made/prepare the parts for two identical sets.
The reactor housing is household 20X4.5 water filter, about 1.7 Gallon water volume, big size Cerges reactor.

Turned out I can lay it flat for a perfect yugang style reactor for my aquarium, lol.

if lay flat the reactor, max internal co2 contact surface area is about 115 inch^2(21"X5.5"), and my aquarium is 168G with 50G sump, main tank + sump water surface area is about 2080 inch^2 (60" X 24" + 40" X 16"), it is 1:18 ratio!

 

[Yugang]

1:18 ratio!

Serendipity

I believe it will work very well, and having the same reactor horizontal rather than vertical when used as Cerges it will give the following benefits:

• A much higher CO2 injection power (as I calculated in a earlier thread it is very unlikely to achieve same CO2 absorption surface area from sum of bubbles in Cerges, as compared to the surface area of horizontal reactor - all assuming same size of reactor).
• Stabilised injection with overflow mode
• Automatic purge of gasses that will built up by diffusion back from water into gas pockets, while Cerges would likely need manual purging.
• Probably less noisy than Cerges, and no need to adjust flows to optimise Cerges
• Less pressure loss for pump, as we don't have the bubbles that will create an airlift pump function.

I see only one disadvantage of this approach, which is that I imagine that the Cerges housing is more expensive than a simple tube that would be sufficient for a horizontal reactor.

 

[Koan]

Turned out I can lay it flat for a perfect yugang style reactor for my aquarium, lol.

Sweet!!

Can you show pics of this assembly and the water flow? For those of us in the audience who are challenged trying to visualize this..

I see only one disadvantage of this approach, which is that I imagine that the Cerges housing is more expensive

Vs. no cutting / no gluing / no drilling (?) / fully assembleable from relatively attractive, commercially available parts sounds like a win!

Anyone know what are the range of size options for the water filter housings?

 

[Bettatail]

Can you show pics of this assembly and the water flow? For those of us in the audience who are challenged trying to visualize this..

not at the moment, the aquarium I have is not in operation. I will put things back together until my family move back to my house...

but I can show you picture of the identical setup that I built for a fellow planted tank hobbyist.

anyone know what are the range of size options for the water filter housings?

lay side way, the 10" X 4.5" filter housing max contact area is about 60^2 inches(11"X5.5")
the 10" X 2.5" housing is about 33^2 inches
the 20 X 2.5" housing is about 66^2 inches.
and the one I have, 20" X 4.5" housing, about 115^2 inches.
These are the main four types of commercially available house water filter housing.

picture is the setup from the fellow planted tank hobbyist.


add (edited):
one more picture, in operation.

 

[narnia]

I have a 4050 cm² tank, and using the formula, I got a value of 229 cm² with a constant of 17.7. I want to use PVC pipe with an inner diameter of 3.52cm. However, I need to keep the footprint small due to limited space, so I divided the 65 cm length into two parts and rounded down to 30 cm each. (I've seen some recent posts suggesting that a smaller size is fine too).

My idea is something like this: two chambers stacked one on top of the other, with a barb fitting at the end for the output.



But I have a few questions:

1) Should I use a wide-radius 90-degree fitting to avoid reducing the flow rate?

Spoiler: This fittings

2) I'm trying to find an acrylic pipe for the second section to monitor the bubble, but I only found options with 2 mm or 3 mm wall thickness. Is that okay?

3) If I use the acrylic pipe, how do I bond it with the PVC fittings?

4) I have a lot of floating plants in this tank, this will change the surface area in the calculation?

5) Why some design have a purge outlet?

Thanks in advance for any input!

 

[stonedboss]

i just completed my yugang reactor build. but my issue is the water level keeps rising in the pipe. its at the point where if im not pumping in co2, water comes out the top.

my build: 2 inch diameter main pipe, 24 inches long. 3/4 inch diameter bypass, fully opened. im using a fluval 407 filter. the part that doesnt make sense to me is my filter tubing is 17mm ID, the bypass is 19mm ID, so why cant it keep up with the flow??

 

[Art]

Hoping @Yugang can chime in.

I'm going to have to study up on his reactor as it seems more and more people are using it.

 

[Unexpected]

i just completed my yugang reactor build. but my issue is the water level keeps rising in the pipe. its at the point where if im not pumping in co2, water comes out the top.

my build: 2 inch diameter main pipe, 24 inches long. 3/4 inch diameter bypass, fully opened. im using a fluval 407 filter. the part that doesnt make sense to me is my filter tubing is 17mm ID, the bypass is 19mm ID, so why cant it keep up with the flow??

I'm confused. Can you explain better what's happening or shoot a video of what's happening?

When CO2 is off, the pipe will be mostly full of water. When CO2 is on, the pipe will be roughly half full of water and have a gap of CO2 to the point of overflow mode.

 

[Bsully]

If you dont have one You’ll need a check valve inline to prevent the backflow of water into the co2 system when its off.
This or similar

New Pro-Series Precision CO2 Check Valve

The World's finest Precision NEW Bazooka In-Tank Flux_ CO2 Diffuser for planted aquariums.

www.co2art.us

 

[snowballs99]

Hey if you're gonna test out CO2 diffusion methods, can you try out mines as well to compare?

Get a high GPH pump with a long flow nozzle.
Get a CO2 atomizer.

Ziptie the co2 nozzle onto the outflow of the GPH pump.
Get it as close as possible to the outflow.

If the atomizer is decent, it should shred the co2 bubbles to the finest mist you'll ever see.

This seems to do a much better job than all the inline diffusers I've ever used in the past, atleast compared to plant response and speed. You can get some pretty insane pearling on fast growing species I never get with an inline reactor (Albeit I only used the cheap 30$ reactors amazon).

The only downside about it is that it looks ugly as .

 

[Koan]

Have a look further up this thread, there's a lot of good information at the beginning.

The whole premise of the Yugang reactor is that co2 has to diffuse across the water / air interface. No amount of bubbles can ever create enough surface interface area to match the flat surface interface inside this reactor.

 

[snowballs99]

Have a look further up this thread, there's a lot of good information at the beginning.

The whole premise of the Yugang reactor is that co2 has to diffuse across the water / air interface. No amount of bubbles can ever create enough surface interface area to match the flat surface interface inside this reactor.

I'll read through it in a bit then. But I'm fairly certain CO2 misting would create more surface area in your tank area since you can blow the bubbles throughout the entire aquarium rather than limiting it to the surface area of the tube on the reactor.

 

[Koan]

since you can blow the bubbles throughout the entire aquarium

Yes that is counterintuitive to think about. The air/water interface surface area, where the CO2 dissolves, would be equal to the sum total of the surfaces of all of those bubbles, added together.

No matter how many tiny bubbles you have, they are not going to add up to equal the flat air/water interface surface in a horizontal reactor.

 

[Pneumonicsonic]

If you dont have one You’ll need a check valve inline to prevent the backflow of water into the co2 system when its off.
This or similar

New Pro-Series Precision CO2 Check Valve

The World's finest Precision NEW Bazooka In-Tank Flux_ CO2 Diffuser for planted aquariums.

www.co2art.us

I need to reread this thread I think because I’m planning on setting up the clear large ARC version of his reactor next month and I only have tubing, a regulator, and the reactor so far, I forgot about a check valve. (I’ll be buying a co2 tank from a home brewing store near my new house when I arrive)
Thanks!

 

[stonedboss]

I'm confused. Can you explain better what's happening or shoot a video of what's happening?

When CO2 is off, the pipe will be mostly full of water. When CO2 is on, the pipe will be roughly half full of water and have a gap of CO2 to the point of overflow mode.

Ok so it's normal to fill up? When CO2 is on, it's maybe 3/4 full. No bubbles escape though so I'm assuming all CO2 is dissolving. And yeah when it's off it fully fills and the water gets to the check valve. I'm just paranoid of the check valve being the only thing to stop a leak lol. Could I use two check valves?

I'll try to get a video when I'm home, but it sounds like it's working correctly I guess. I just expected the reactor to always be half full for some reason lol.

 

[Unexpected]

Ok so it's normal to fill up? When CO2 is on, it's maybe 3/4 full. No bubbles escape though so I'm assuming all CO2 is dissolving. And yeah when it's off it fully fills and the water gets to the check valve. I'm just paranoid of the check valve being the only thing to stop a leak lol. Could I use two check valves?

Yes, it fills with CO2 when on and fills with water when CO2 is off. Just use a quality check valve. No reason to run 2.

 

[stonedboss]

Ok sounds good, thanks for confirming! I'm using a GLA check valve so hopefully they're good quality lol. Very happy with my build then knowing it's working correctly. No bubbles at all in my out flow and seems to be perfectly efficient for dissolving co2.

 

[Yugang]

I am sharing here the graphs and calculations that I made for AquaRocksColorado, assisting them with the design of their commercial reactor.

This one illustrates how the power of the reactor can be adjusted. Remember, the power is proportional to surface area, length * width, and it is the width of the water/gas pocket that we adjust by rotating the off-centre water exit.



Now if we want to have at least a factor of 2 adjustable power, ie from 100% to 50%, how much does the water exit needs to be off centre? At least 0.86 r.



Then I took a table of ADA standard aquarium sizes, and calculated the tank surface area, and then the required reactor surface area for a 1.5 pH drop target, and for a 1.2 drop pH target.

As ARC wanted all reactors to have same 94 mm inner diameter, I tried to setup a range of 4 reactors to cover all tank sizes from 45-P up to 180-P. Each reactor covers a range of powers by virtue of the rotating exit, and I tried to gave them a bit of overlap so that users had a choice if any doubt which one to take.



We see that the large reactor works for really big tanks, and could push a 1.5 pH drop for a 180-P in its maximum setting. In its minimum setting, 28.200 mm2, it can do a 1.5 pH drop on a 90-P, but not lower in overflow mode. Of course one could limit the flow of CO2 by the regulator, and have it work in a more conventional regulator mode.

The medium large version in its maximum setting will do 1.5 pH drop on a 120-P tank. On its minimum setting, the 75-P tank is probably the smallest tank without the risk pushing CO2 too far in overflow mode. As mentioned above, we could of course limit the flow and use it on smaller tanks in regulator mode.

Currently only Medium Large and Large versions are commercially available, but as not all tanks are large and not all users want to push as much as 1.5 pH drop it would be recommended to have the two smaller versions available as well.